


Write Like the Wind

by LauraAnneB



Category: Beetlejuice - All Media Types, Beetlejuice - Perfect/Brown & King
Genre: Beetlelands Week 2020, Fluff, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:15:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26330245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LauraAnneB/pseuds/LauraAnneB
Summary: Adam wants to do something for nerd-kind now that he has ghostly powers. Beetlejuice and Barbara help out. Spoilers for The Winds of Winter.
Relationships: Beetlejuice/Adam Maitland/Barbara Maitland
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12
Collections: Beetlelands Week 2020





	Write Like the Wind

When Beetlejuice returned from the Netherworld, he came back powerful. Barbara wasn’t exactly sure how—the story changed with each telling. 

But he returned with enough power to teleport her and Adam pretty much anywhere he could visualize. Thanks to Google Street View, he could visualize quite a few things.

Being able to teleport was very helpful when Adam had a specific request.

The ghosts and demon appeared inside a very fancy home, with sunlight streaming in the windows. Beetlejuice was hovering between Barbara and Adam, holding their hands. Barbara suspected this wasn’t strictly part of his teleportation ability, but it was a nice excuse to hold hands.

The demon shimmered in and out briefly, wincing.

“Everything okay?” Barbara asked.

“Teleporting all the way to New Mexico is a lot. We’re definitely gonna need to stop by a bolt-hole on the way back.” According to Beetlejuice, undead travellers could recharge in places with a lot of “death energy”—graveyards, usually, or famous battlefields.

The clicking of a keyboard drew the three of them to an office where a large, grey-haired man sat in front of his computer.

Adam sucked in a breath. “There he is,” he whispered.

Beetlejuice rolled his eyes. “Sexy, you’re dead. He can’t hear you.” Sure enough, the writer hadn’t turned around at the sound of Beetlejuice’s voice.

“Oh.” Adam looked a bit disappointed. “I guess I just assumed that he’d be attuned to the supernatural. He’s a master of the sci-fi/fantasy genre! Anyway, let’s go see what he’s working on.” He crossed his fingers as the three of them huddled around the author’s computer screen.

Barbara felt a bit awkward reading over someone’s shoulder, and looked politely aside. She’d never gotten into sci-fi and fantasy the way Adam had; he’d know better than she would what they were looking at.

Her husband’s face fell. “ _Wild Cards_?!” he spluttered. “ _Wild_ freaking _Cards_! I know he only edits the anthologies, but they’re a distraction!” He ran his hands through his hair. “Just write the books, George!”

“I can take over his computer and threaten to start deleting files until the books are done!” Beetlejuice crowed. “Make it seem like he’s got a computer virus!”

Adam’s gaze flicked between Beetlejuice and the author’s computer a few times.

Barbara cleared her throat.

“No, of course not,” Adam said quickly. “Thanks for saving me from myself, sweetie.” He kissed her cheek. He focused on the author, holding out his hand. “Sorry about this.”

The author stopped what he was doing. He saved then exited out of the document. Adam searched through the computer files for a moment then made the author open up a document titled _The Winds of Winter_.

The document opened after a few moments. ‘Want to pick up where you left off?’ Word asked helpfully, and the author clicked on it. There were a bunch of unfamiliar words and names on the page that showed up.

_No sense in me reading this._ Barbara decided to look around a famous author’s office. She’d expected him to have a bunch of memorabilia from the TV show, but the furnishings were really quite ordinary. Unsurprisingly, there were a lot of bookshelves filled with books.

There was silence from the author, whose fingers were poised over the keyboard.

“C’mon, Sexy, get writing.” Beetlejuice hovered in mid-air, bobbing slightly. He was also eyeing the author’s office, but he was probably wondering where to put spiders.

“Er, there’s no way I can give him partial control, can I? I can’t write the next book!”

“Not how it works, newb.”

Adam sighed. “Okay. Um, my thoughts definitely won’t be his, but maybe I can make a start. Barbara, you took that course in creative writing in college, right? Do you have any tips?” Adam was an amazing man with many good qualities, but pure creativity wasn’t one of them.

“I can try, but I wasn’t writing award-winning fantasy novels back in college.” Barbara dredged up some memories of the TV show. “Maybe you should make the White Walkers show up! You know, inject some tension.”

“It’s an Arianne Martel chapter.”

Barbara had no idea what that meant. “Um…have a dragon show up?”

“I appreciate the thought, but Arianne is going to treat with Young Griff, and the entire point is that he’s a supposed Targaryen that doesn’t have dragons.”

Beetlejuice spoke up. “Have some brothers and sisters bone. Shove a little smut in there.”

“Not only does that not work in this chapter, I’m also not comfortable with that.”

“Or skip to a Dany chapter,” Barbara suggested. “I just want good things for her. How’s she doing, anyway?”

“Not well.” Adam made the author pull up a Dany chapter. He watched the blinking cursor for a few moments, frowning in thought.

Beetlejuice added, “You could write a bunch of dialogue in what’s basically a white room and see where it takes you. That’s an A-plus writing strategy, right there.”

Adam sighed, rubbing his forehead. After a few more moments of intense concentration, he looked away from the computer screen.

The author shook his head, blinking a few times.

“Maybe just having the document open will prompt him to write?” Adam asked hopefully.

The author closed out of _The Winds of Winter_ and went back to a document called Wild Cards_edits.

Adam’s shoulders slumped.

Beetlejuice hovered closer. “Just casually mentioning that we can take out the phone, snap some pics of these new chapters, and threaten to leak them if he doesn’t write the books.”

“Photos of chapters over his shoulder?” Barbara said. “That’s pretty terrifying.”

The demon chuckled darkly.

“Ah. And that was exactly the point.” Beetlejuice might have changed a lot since his return from the Netherworld, but his love of fear and chaos that wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

“No, Beetlejuice,” Adam said. “It wouldn’t work anyway. What kind of writing would you get if someone was bullied into it?”

“Bleh, you’re no fun. Where to next, Sexy? That Rothfuss guy?”

“Let’s just go home.”

“Have to make a quick stop first, but okay.” Beetlejuice grabbed their hands and teleported them away.

They landed in someplace pitch black. Beetlejuice lit a match of neon green fire, revealing a small underground crypt barely large enough for the three of them. Every surface was draped with dust and cobwebs. A half-open coffin showed patchy, stained velvet. If there was a door to this crypt, the match didn’t reveal it.

Beetlejuice tilted his head. “Ahhh, that’s better.” He frowned slightly, as if listening to something. Barbara couldn’t hear anything. “Yep, think it’s still sandworm free! Lemme just recharge for a while.”

“You’ve been here before?” she asked.

“Nah, but I saw drawings from some ghost hunters back in the Netherworld. Ghost hunters can go topside to bring ghosts back, and they need places to rest, too.”

“So, ghost hunters are ghosts who hunt other ghosts?”

“Yeah, and they’re the worst. The Bureau of the Dead won’t let anyone go topside unless they’re a boot-licker. But it was good to know a few of their tricks when I got banished up here.”

Barbara glanced at Adam, who normally would’ve loved Netherworld lore. It wasn’t every day that Beetlejuice opened up about a place that was, in his words, “total Meh-ville.” But Adam wasn’t even listening. The gloomy atmosphere of the crypt fit his gloomy expression perfectly.

“Hey,” Barbara said softly. When Adam turned her way, she squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry it didn’t work out the way you wanted it to.”

“I guess art just has to happen at its own pace. You can’t force it. I just feel bad for all the other dead readers who’ll never get to read the end of the series. All they’ll have is the TV show’s ending.” He snorted in disgust.

“Maybe you planted a seed. Who knows? Inspiration is a funny thing.”

“And there’s always fanfic,” Beetlejuice added.

“It’s not the same,” Adam said with a sigh.

“Heh, speaking of fanfic….” Beetlejuice hopped into the coffin. “Oh noooo. There’s only one bed!”

Barbara and Adam stared at him. She had no idea what he was talking about.

Beetlejuice huffed. “Oh, come on. None of you ever read a romance fic? Hell, a romance novel?”

“No,” Adam said.

“Not really my thing,” Barbara added. She was a fan of biographies and autobiographies of famous people, personally. “And, also? Not a bed. It’s a coffin. And sleeping in a coffin is also not my thing.”

“Jesus, so picky.” Beetlejuice snapped his fingers, and the coffin became their bed at home. “Get over here.” He hesitated then said, “Please.” Barbara and Adam had had conversations with him about asking instead of demanding; happily, it looked like those conversations were sticking.

Beetlejuice had just done them a huge favour, and a little cuddling might cheer Adam up. Barbara went to join Beetlejuice, shooting a questioning glance at Adam. He followed them, though he was still brooding.

She and Beetlejuice let Adam slide between them as the three sorted themselves out. (Sometimes, Beetlejuice would throw in extra limbs or a few clones just for the added challenge.) After some scooching and wriggling, Barbara’s cheek rested on Adam’s shoulder as she stroked his chest gently and held his left hand. Beetlejuice had one arm over the two of them and was, for some reason, nibbling on Adam’s hair, which sometimes became kissing the top of his head. After a while, you got used to a certain amount of weirdness.

Gradually, Adam began to relax. First, the tension left his shoulders. Then, he cracked his neck and his jaw untightened. (He’d needed to wear a mouthguard when he slept when he was alive. He was always grinding his teeth.)

“Maybe…” he murmured. “Maybe I could write the ending to the books. It’ll be fanfic, but it’ll be something, at least. I can work on that project while the Deetzes are asleep. I’ve never written fic before, but I could try. It’s not like I need to eat or sleep. And I’ve been looking for a new project ever since I finished the model.” His model of the town had a place of pride in the attic, which the Maitlands had cleaned out and repurposed into an arts and crafts room. They still kept up with their hobbies, but they had fewer now that they were busy rehabilitating Beetlejuice and parenting Lydia.

“I’m sure it’ll be great, hon.” Barbara kissed his cheek. “I’ll help however I can.”

“And I can tell you all about what fic tropes you can put in!” Beetlejuice said. “Or what fic tropes we can do ourselves.” He must’ve been thinking about some sexual ones, for he chortled and squeezed Adam’s butt. “Gotta keep the rating PG-13 for Beetlelands Week, but…you know which ones.” He winked at no one in particular, it seemed. Sometimes, he pretended he had an audience; Barbara and Adam just ignored it.

Beetlejuice moved to nuzzling Adam’s throat. After a few moments, he began patting Barbara’s hair.

Barbara giggled. “Aren’t you supposed to be recharging?”

“It’s called multitasking, baby.” Idly, he commented, “Shit, fluff is hard to end. How do you even end something that by its nature has low stakes and minimal conflict?”

What was he talking about? Barbara shrugged.

Adam thoughtfully said, “Maybe with a kiss?”

“Hah!” Barbara couldn’t help but grin when Beetlejuice laughed like that. This wasn’t an evil cackle or a dark chuckle, but an open, cheerful sound that she’d been hearing more and more since they’d started dating. “Perfect! You’re so ready to be a fic writer, Sexy!”

Beetlejuice kissed Adam on the lips, and the cuddling in a false bed in an underground crypt continued.

Not for the first time, Barbara reflected, _My afterlife is so weird._

But it did have its perks.

**Author's Note:**

> For Beetlelands Week 2020. Prompt: One Bed.


End file.
